Ernest Hemingway<\/b><\/p>\n
Gertrude Stein wrote very few book reviews. \u00a0Behind each is a web of friendship which is part of the American literary procession of the 1920s and 1930s. \u00a0From the United States, on December 3, 1921, Sherwood Anderson, whom Stein had met through Sylvia Beach in June, wrote her to introduce his friend Ernest Hemingway and his wife who were coming to live in Paris. \u00a0He was, Anderson wrote, \u201can American writer instinctively in touch with everything worth while going on here.\u201d \u00a0The story of their friendship, as told by Stein in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas<\/i>, and Hemingway\u2019s version in A Moveable Feast<\/i>, has become part of the lore of twentieth-century literary history. \u00a0Stein\u2019s review of Hemingway\u2019s first book, Three Stories & Ten Poems <\/i>(1923) was done in part to thank him for his review of her Geography and Plays <\/i>(1922), which had an introductory essay, \u201cThe Work of Gertrude Stein,\u201d by Anderson which had been published in the \u201cRecent Publications\u201d column of the European edition of the Chicago Tribune<\/i> on 5 March 1923 (p. 2). \u00a0His review speaks of Stein as \u201cprobably the most first rate intelligence employed in writing today. \u00a0If you are tired of Mr. D. H. Lawrence who writes extremely well with the intelligence of a head waiter or Mr. Wells who is believed to be intelligent because of a capacity for sustained marathon thinking or the unbelievably stupid but thoroughly conscientious young men who compile the Dial you ought to read Gertrude Stein.\u201d \u00a0Of Anderson Hemingway wrote, \u201cSherwood wrote the introduction soon after he won the Dial prize and the new respectability was still on him. \u00a0It is a little restrained, the introduction. \u00a0But the next to the last paragraph is a corker.\u201d \u00a0Hemingway does not quote the paragraph in his review, it reads: \u201cFor me the work of Gertrude Stein consists in a rebuilding, an entire new recasting of life, in the city of words. \u00a0Here is one artist who has been able to accept ridicule, who has even forgone the privilege of writing the great American novel, uplifting our English speaking stage, and wearing the bays of the great poets, to go live among the little housekeeping words, the swaggering bullying street-corner words, the honest working, money saving words and all the other forgotten and neglected citizens of the sacred and half forgotten city.\u201d<\/p>\n
To thank Hemingway, Stein wrote the following review of his first book, Three Stories & Ten Poems <\/i>(Paris: Contact Publishing Co., 1923):<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201cThree stories and ten poems is very pleasantly said. \u00a0So far so good, further than that, and as far as that, I may say of Ernest Hemingway that as he sticks to poetry and intelligence it is both poetry and intelligent. \u00a0Rosevelt [sic] is genuinely felt as young as Hemingway and as old as Rosevelt. \u00a0I should say that Hemingway should stick to poetry and intelligence and eschew the hotter emotions and the more turgid vision. \u00a0Intelligence and a great deal of it is a good thing to use when you have it, it\u2019s all for the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stein drafted the review on the verso of Carl Van Vechten\u2019s letter to her of September 3, 1923. \u00a0She also drafted a letter to W. Dawson Johnston who edited Ex libris<\/i>, the monthly review published by the American Library in Paris, telling him that she thought the review and her composition, \u201cHe and They, Hemingway: A Portrait,\u201d would \u201cdo nicely together.\u201d \u00a0Stein\u2019s review was published in the \u201cRecent Publications\u201d column of the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune <\/i>on November 27, 1923 (p. 4), the portrait, which she had written sometime before Hemingway and his wife Hadley left France for Canada on August 16, 1923, appeared in the December 1923 edition of Ex libris<\/i>. \u00a0Until 1981, Hemingway scholars believed that the review had never been published. \u00a0Stein\u2019s was, in fact, the first published review of Hemingway\u2019s first book.<\/p>\n
Sherwood Anderson<\/b><\/p>\n
On May 14, 1921, Anderson and his second wife Tennessee sailed for Paris with Paul Rosenfeld, the journalist and music critic. \u00a0The editors of the Dial<\/i> announced in June that they had awarded him a two-thousand dollar prize for his contribution to American literature, in particular for his work on the short-story form. \u00a0The meeting of Anderson and Stein is also part of the mythic lore of American literary relations. \u00a0In his wanderings about Paris, Anderson found himself by accident peering into the window of a book shop at 8, rue Dupuytren, near the Carrefour de l\u2019Odeon. \u00a0The shop was the first location of Sylvia Beach\u2019s Shakespeare and Company. \u00a0In the window was a copy of his Winesburg, Ohio, <\/i>which had been published by B. W. Huebsch in New York in 1919. \u00a0Anderson introduced himself to Beach, and it was she who wrote to Stein (undated June 1921 letter) asking if she would let her bring Anderson to meet her. \u00a0\u201cHe is so anxious to know you for he says you have influenced him ever so much & that you stand as such a great master of words.\u201d \u00a0Anderson\u2019s meeting with Stein was one of the high points of his trip to Paris. \u00a0Edmund R. Brown, the publisher of The Four Seas Company suggested to Stein that an explanatory preface to her forthcoming Geography and Plays<\/i> would be helpful in marketing the book. \u00a0Anderson had returned to the United States, and when she wrote him in the fall of 1921 asking him to write an essay. \u00a0He wrote her in February 1922 from New Orleans of his willingness to write on her work and its importance to him, and later that month he sent the essay to her. \u00a0To thank him, Stein wrote \u201cIdem The Same: A Valentine for Sherwood Anderson\u201d (most of the sections of the valentine are a love poem to Alice Toklas), which was published in The Little Review<\/i> in Spring 1923. \u00a0When Anderson\u2019s A Story-teller\u2019s Story <\/i>was published by B. W. Huebsch in 1924, Stein wrote a review, \u201cA Stitch in Time Saves Nine. \u00a0Birds of a Feather Flock Together. \u00a0Chickens Come Home to Roost,\u201d which was published in Ex libris <\/i>in March 1925.<\/p>\n
Review of Sherwood Anderson\u2019s <\/b>A Story-teller\u2019s Story<\/i><\/b>:<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are four men so far in American letters who have essential intelligence. \u00a0They are Fenimore Cooper, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain and Sherwood Anderson. \u00a0They do not reflect life or describe life or embroider life or photograph life, they express life and to express life takes essential intelligence. \u00a0Whether to express life is the most interesting thing to do or the most important thing to do I do not know, but I do know that it is the most permanent thing to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cSherwood Anderson has been doing this thing from his beginning. \u00a0The development of the quality of this doing has been one of steady development, steady development of his mind and character, steady development in the completion of this expression. \u00a0The story-teller\u2019s story is like all long books uneven but there is no uncertainty in the fullness of its quality. \u00a0In detail in the beginning and it does begin, in the beginning there is the complete expression of a game, the boys are and they feel they are and they have completely been and they completely are. \u00a0I think no one can hesitate before the reality of the expression of the life of the Anderson boys. \u00a0And then later, the living for and by clean linen and the being of the girl who has to have and to give what is needed is without any equal in quality in anything that has been done up to this time by any one writing to-day.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe story-teller\u2019s story is not a story of events or experiences it is a story of existence, and the fact that the story teller exists makes a story and keeps on making a story. \u00a0The story-teller\u2019s story will live because the story-teller is alive. \u00a0As he is alive and as his gift is the complete expression of that life it will continue to live.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stein remained loyal to Anderson, and the passages about him in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas <\/i>(1933) show her deep appreciation of him. \u00a0When she travelled to the United States in 1934-35, crisscrossing the United States on a lecture tour, she saw Anderson twice, the first time in Minnesota and then again in New Orleans. \u00a0Shortly before she returned to France, in May 1935, her review of Puzzled America<\/i>, a collection of Anderson\u2019s essays published by Charles Scribner\u2019s Sons, appeared in the May 4 edition of The Chicago Daily Tribune<\/i>. \u00a0Anderson died on March 8, 1941, while he and his wife Eleanor were on a cruise to South America. \u00a0On board the same Grace liner, the Santa Lucia<\/i>, was Thornton Wilder. \u00a0In a letter to him postmarked 6 March 1941, she wrote of the deprivations in occupied France and of \u201ca wonderful sugar made of grapes.\u201d \u00a0When she learned of Anderson\u2019s death, the sweetness of the grape sugar became associated with Anderson\u2019s \u201csweetness\u201d in her tribute, \u201cSherwood\u2019s Sweetness,\u201d which appeared in the Anderson memorial issue of Story <\/i>(September-October 1941).<\/p>\n
Alfred Kreymborg (1883-1966)<\/b><\/p>\n
Kreymborg was a poet, playwright, and novelist. \u00a0He founded a number of literary journals which advocated for the work of modernist writers. \u00a0The first of these journals was The Glebe <\/i>(1913-14). \u00a0On the advice of John Cournos, Ezra Pound sent Kreymborg a typescript of the collection of poems he named Des Imagistes<\/i>. \u00a0In February 1914, issue five of The Glebe <\/i>published Pound\u2019s selection of poems. \u00a0A set of pages was then published by Albert and Charles Boni as a separate publication. \u00a0Kreymborg also founded Others: A Magazine of New Verse<\/i> which lasted from 1915 to 1919. \u00a0Among the contributors were Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore. \u00a0\u00a0Kreymborg\u2019s play Lima Beans<\/i> was produced by the Provincetown Plays in the autumn of 1916. \u00a0Mina Loy played the role of The Wife and William Carlos Williams The Husband. \u00a0William Zorach played the silent role The Huckster, and with his wife Marguerite designed the sets and costumes. \u00a0In 1921, Kreymborg came to Europe with Harold Loeb with the intention of founding a new literary review. \u00a0Stein\u2019s Massachusetts friend Kate Buss introduced them to her. \u00a0Eventually Broom<\/i>, which was published in Rome, accepted two pieces by Stein, \u201cIf You Had Three Husbands\u201d (published in three installments, 1922) and a short piece \u201cWear\u201d in 1923. \u00a0Kreymborg left Broom <\/i>in 1922. \u00a0Stein was indebted to him, and when he published his Troubador: An American Autobiography <\/i>in 1925, she wrote a review which was published in Ex libris <\/i>in June 1925 and reprinted in The Baltimore Evening Sun <\/i>on September 2, 1925.<\/p>\n
Stein wrote of Troubadour<\/i>:<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are many histories of us then and now and they are written now and they are often written now. \u00a0Many histories of us are often written now. \u00a0Sometimes in the histories of us each one of us is different from the others of us and the one writing the history of himself and us is different in his history of himself and us from us. \u00a0In this history of us of himself and us Kreymborg makes us makes himself and each one of us different enough so that some one can know us. \u00a0That is very nice for him and for us and very pleasant for him and for us and very satisfying to him and to us. We are all pleased with him and with us and so we say that he has made a very good description of himself and of each one of us. \u00a0A history of himself and of each one of us and connections of more than one of us is a very sensitive thing, a sensitive history of himself and of each of us and some who are ones and one. Always this is a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
When she wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas<\/i> she recalled her meetings with Kreymborg and Loeb, \u201cKreymborg and his wife came to the house frequently. \u00a0He wanted very much to run The Long Gay Book, the thing Gertrude Stein had written just after The Making of Americans, as a serial. \u00a0Of course Harold Loeb would not consent to that. \u00a0Kreymborg used to read out the sentences from this book with great gusto. \u00a0He and Gertrude Stein had a bond of union beside their mutual liking because the Grafton Press that had printed Three Lives [1909] had printed his first book and about the same time [Love and Life, and Other Studies<\/i>, 1908].<\/p>\n
On January 20, 1934, the Kansas City Star<\/i> printed excerpts from a letter of Stein to Bernard Fa\u00ff about his book Roosevelt and His America<\/i>. \u00a0A more substantive book review, and indeed the last she was to write, was Stein\u2019s commentary on Lloyd Lewis\u2019 Oscar Wilde Discovers America <\/i>(1936) which was published in The Chicago Daily Tribune <\/i>on August 8, 1936. \u00a0Stein met Lewis (1891-1949), the journalist, editor, and historian when she was lecturing at the University of Chicago in February and March 1935. \u00a0In Everybody\u2019s Autobiography <\/i>she writes, \u201cI always want to collaborate with some one about General Grant, I have written about him in Four In America, as if he might have been Hiram Grant instead of Ulysses Grant and what a difference that would have made. \u00a0Lloyd Lewis liked what I said about him and so now I want to collaborate with him about General Grant.\u201d \u00a0Later in the book she writes, \u201cI am always wanting to collaborate with some one I wanted to collaborate with Sherwood Anderson in a history of Grant I wanted to collaborate with Louis Bromfield in a detective story and now I want to collaborate with Lloyd Lewis on a history of Grant. \u00a0They are all very polite and enthusiastic about it but the collaboration does never take place. \u00a0I suppose I like the word collaboration and I have a kind of imagination of how it could take place. \u00a0Well any way.\u201d \u00a0Stein\u2019s efforts to induce Thornton Wilder to collaborate with her on IDA: A NOVEL<\/i> never progressed beyond the discussion stage.<\/p>\n
Book reviewing did not appeal to Stein. \u00a0The few reviews she wrote were done to reciprocate acts of support for her work, or, in the case of Lloyd Lewis, in admiration for his work and the hope that they might collaborate. \u00a0Her reviews were not \u201cthrow-away\u201d pieces. \u00a0It is evident that she read the books with care, and made intelligent observations about them and their authors.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Edward M. Burns is Professor of English at The William Paterson University of New Jersey. \u00a0He is at work on \u201cQuestioning Minds: The Letters of Hugh Kenner and Guy Davenport.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1285,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[105],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n